


wounds only you can mend

by mstigergun



Series: Letters [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Amputation, M/M, Post-Trespasser, Psychological Trauma, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:33:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5436776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mstigergun/pseuds/mstigergun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It’s cold, and they’ve been training for hours. It’s a familiar enough routine, one Virion insisted upon when they returned from the Winter Palace. </i>If I’m going to be a one-handed mage, I might as well be a <i>deadly</i> one-handed mage,<i> he’d said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.</i></p><p>Some wounds wait beneath the surface. Talen would see them brought to light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wounds only you can mend

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by the lovely [openthepocketwatch](http://openthepocketwatch.tumblr.com), who asked that I specifically answer this prompt (a slow kiss) post-Trespasser for the sake of feelings. Well, Hayley, you know me. I always oblige!
> 
> Post-Trespasser, with a fair number of feelings. Originally posted on [Tumblr!](http://mstigergun.tumblr.com/post/132539495598/second-a-slow-kiss-for-virion-and-talen)
> 
> Thanks, as always, to [enviouspride](http://enviouspride.tumblr.com) for lending me Virion, who is the absolute best and who I am sad to inflict such bad things on. As a bonus, he does get Talen? And we all get lots of feelings!

It’s cold, and they’ve been training for hours. It’s a familiar enough routine, one Virion insisted upon when they returned from the Winter Palace.  _If I’m going to be a one-handed mage, I might as well be a deadly one-handed mage_ , he’d said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

So they wake, and Talen brings tea up from the kitchens while Virion picks away at whatever intelligence he’s been given on Solas, or whatever new political quagmire requires maneuvering in that singularly deft way of his.

Talen can’t even begin to think through the enormity of what they have to accomplish: a force that rests uneasily in the mountains chasing after a mage thought for centuries to be a god. He can’t grasp all that Virion must do, but –

Talen does understand certain things. He can offer  _those_ : a steady presence at Virion’s side, hours in the yard with daggers, and a promise – that he will see the throat ripped out of the wolf.

It’s a promise he keeps to himself. Some vows are best made in silence.

A hard, frustrated sound escapes Virion’s mouth as Talen once again slips past his defenses, blunted blade flicking to long line of his throat.

“You know,” Virion says as they break apart, shoving the dagger back into its sheath across his back. “Anyone else would go at least a  _little_  easy on me.” He says it in good enough humour, but something sharp rests beneath the surface of his syllables, like broken glass swept beneath a rug.

Good. There wound still living in Virion will grow infected if he pretends it isn’t there, and Talen would be the one who sees him mended. He would be the person who can see  _this_ , if Virion feels he must keep it from everyone else.

“They would,” Talen says, wiping his arm across his forehead, the sweat at the back of his neck cold as ice. “And so anyone else would see you unprepared.”

“I’m –” starts Virion, then he stops. Looks away, up toward the high tower crowned by their quarters. “I do appreciate your help,  _vhenan_ , but I wonder how, precisely, all of this will make a difference. How  _this_ ,” he says, with a sharp gesture of the prosthetic Dagna had crafted for him upon their return, “will  _help_.”

“You’ve got a god to kill,” Talen says. He rolls his shoulders, watching Virion steadily across the practice ring.

Virion huffs. It might be a laugh, except it’s too weary for that. “And I doubt that will be with my dagger.”

 _No_ , Talen thinks distantly,  _it will be with mine_.

“And,” he continues, forehead creasing as he thrusts the prosthetic forward, “It certainly won’t be with this  _thing_.” His generous mouth curves downward, a line to match his shoulders, as he continues to stare  _away_.

It’s how Talen knows they’re done. It’s how he knows every day that they’ve finished: Virion’s insistence dissolves into –

Resignation. Bitterness. Perhaps despair.

Something honest. He spends so many hours of his day acting as though everything is  _fine_ , as though he hasn’t been scraped raw by the demands placed upon him, but the endless and seemingly impossible feats he must accomplish.

Talen would see his darknesses. He would see them and know them as intimately as his own, so that he might fight them at Virion’s side.

It’s delicate work, however. Thankfully, Talen is comfortable flitting from shadow to shadow, in moving in circuitous paths.

He sheathes his daggers, pausing to blow into his hands. “I can hardly feel my fingers,” Talen says after a moment, voice quiet beneath the broad sky above. Hushed in the chill air. “Shall we go inside?”

“Very likely wise,” says Virion. “I can only feel half of mine.” He shoots Talen a crooked smile, which Talen returns but –

He would have to be blind not to notice that it doesn’t reach Virion’s eyes. That it falters at one edge. Still, they trail up the stairs and into the Great Hall, the fires all roaring and lending at least some lingering warmth to the wide space within. Though Josephine has done her level best to make it feel less austere – ample drapes, endless banners, long tables and soft rugs – Skyhold was never a place meant to feel like  _home_.

But Talen’s home isn’t a place.

He watches Virion, who moves by his side, pausing only to murmur pleasantries to some visiting noble from somewhere in Nevarra. The man’s eye catches on the metallic gleam of the prosthetic, though he makes a good show of not looking.

Talen notices, though. And so Virion notices too.

They head upstairs, Talen tugging off his training leathers and the thin tunic beneath as soon as they push past the wooden door to their quarters. The persistent chill of Skyhold is worst here, he thinks, but the fire is roaring with all its might, and so the air is  _almost_  warm against his bare skin. Servants would have been up earlier to feed the fire, just as Josephine had been up to leave a pile of letters and reports requiring Virion’s attention – which sits, now, on the corner of his desk.

Virion follows, sitting down heavily on the chaise by the railing. He shoves one sleeve out of the way, and sets to unbuckling the prosthetic, staring down at the limb with a frown growing all too familiar.

Talen watches. Watches the hard, sharp way Virion undoes the buckles. Watches him sigh as it slips free from the remainder of his arm. Watches the line of his body grow lax, as if he can finally breathe again.

The prosthetic falls to the floor, loud. Heavy.

Nearly, Talen thinks, as heavy as Virion’s heart when he’s wearing it.

“ _Vhenan_ ,” he says, leaning against the edge of Virion’s desk, arms crossed against his bare skin. “That bothers you.”

“The prosthetic?” Virion asks, looking up. His legs are set wide, one elbow resting on his knee as his other arms falls to his side. “It does, but –”

He stops.

It used to be that Virion would rather talk himself in circles than simply fall to silence, that it was Talen whose silences needed to be teased apart, unknotted to reveal the difficult darknesses at their very centres. But many things have changed. Everything has changed.

Well, not everything.

Still Virion is the anchor to Talen’s world, and he may have come undone –

But then that’s why Talen is here. He can’t yet tear the throat from the wolf whose jaws snapped shut on his lover’s heart, but he can be  _here_ , in whatever way Virion needs him. He can hold Virion as he breaks, and then piece him back together.

After all, no one knows darkness quite so well as Talen.

“But what?” asks Talen, pushing himself from the desk and walking to pluck the prosthetic from the ground. The metal is cold, and it glints in the firelight. He turns his back to Virion as he crosses the room to place it on the little stand Dagna had crafted for it, as though it were a particularly fine stave.

Which is when Virion says it, Talen entirely across their quarters and as far as he could possibly be while staying inside of the tower. “I’d rather be uncomfortable than… difficult to look at. Better that than unwanted.” His voice quiet, resigned in a way –

That startles him. Makes his heart pulse beneath his breastbone, an ache to match the one he hears in Virion’s voice.

Talen turns. “ _Unwanted_ ,” he repeats, confused. “Virion, I don’t understand.”

For a moment, his lover’s face is perfectly blank, which makes a chill that has nothing to do with the room crawl down Talen’s spine. He shivers.

Virion swallows, still braced against his knee. “It’s hardly an attractive look,” he says finally. “ _This_.” With a gesture of his ruined arm. “I’m not a vain man,  _vhenan_ , but – I would have you still look at me like I’m whole.”

So this is what’s been haunting Virion. One of many ghosts.

Talen’s throat tightens. “You  _are_  whole,” he says, immediately moving back across the room, closing the unacceptable distance between them. He crouches, hand finding the warm muscle of Virion’s thigh. “You – Virion, have you been wearing this because you think I won’t find you  _attractive_  if you don’t?”

Virion’s gray gaze slides away toward the fire.

Talen’s fingers tighten against the soft fabric of Virion’s trousers, his heart an ache inside of his chest. “Then I’ve utterly failed,” he says firm. “If you think that’s even  _remote_  possibility, Virion, I have failed you in this.”

“Talen,” starts Virion.

But it won’t do. Talen reaches out, brushing a hand through Virion’s hair, tracing the shape of his ear. “You,” says Talen, voice quiet in these airy quarters they’ve shared for years now, his thumb warming the tip of Virion’s ear, “were left with an awful power. You were marked by something ancient and dangerous, and you used it to shape the world into a better place. You did  _all that_ , and then you came back to me.”

“But not in one piece,” says Virion. He looks at Talen, stare as gray as stormclouds on the horizon.

There’s nothing Talen can say to change what Solas did; there isn’t a way to him to change what Solas intends for the world. Those are betrayals he will see the wolf ended for. However, in this very small way, in this tiny measure, Talen can permit himself a sliver of gratitude. To have his  _vhenan_ , when he believed Virion might be lost. However wounded Virion had returned, that he had returned at  _all_  –

A breath escapes his lips, brief, as he looks into Virion’s eyes. “I have never loved you more,” he says. “Each day I wake, and see you only as a marvel.  _Ar lath ma, vhenan_ , until I think I might break for all that I hold within me.”

Still, Virion is quiet. Talen can see the uncertainty resting behind his gaze, can see it in the tension in his neck, the tightness of his lips.

Well, if Talen’s words can’t convince him, his actions will have to suffice. Talen pushes his way forward, crawling into Virion’s lap and settling a knee on either side of his lover’s hips. His hands reach forward, tangle themselves in Virion’s hair, soft and familiar, and he presses a kiss to Virion’s lips.

For a moment, Virion is still.

Talen shifts his weight, thumb stroking the line of Virion’s cheekbone, mouth still firm against Virion’s. Insistent. Another heartbeat, and then –

The weight of Virion’s hand against the small of his back, his fingers chill against Talen’s skin. Still, his other arm hesitates, hovering in the space beside Talen.

Talen pulls back. “Don’t hold me like I might break,” he says, reaching to take the remnants of Virion’s other arm and tugging its smooth skin into place against his ribs. “I would have all of you,  _vhenan_.”

“Would you,” Virion murmurs as Talen again leans forward.

It’s more of question than Talen would like.

“Yes,” he says, steady, one hand trailing down the lean line of Virion’s torso, his eyes tracing the line made by his fingers. “I would. All of you.”

He glances back up, half-expecting to be be met with more of the same darkness, but –

When Talen’s heated stare meets Virion’s, he finds all that he’s hoped to see: bright affection, and the low, banked heat of desire. Talen again leans forward, slides their mouths together in an insistent, slick kiss. Virion makes a sound, something warm and almost surprised, against Talen’s hot mouth. He shifts beneath Talen, a subtle movement that nonetheless makes Talen’s hips slide closer to his own. A welcome pressure.

Talen huffs out a breath, which then becomes a softer, hoarser sound in his throat. Again he fits his mouth to Virion’s, a languid kiss that’s all heat and the familiar ache of  _desire_.

“You’re wearing too many  _clothes_ ,” Talen murmurs against Virion’s lips, before again sliding his mouth against Virion’s, distracted by the feel of his lips. The way they fit together. The feeling of his hips beneath Talen’s, the anticipation of having him press deep into Talen and –

Virion’s fingers dig indentations into the skin of Talen’s back, and a breathy moan escapes Talen’s mouth, open against Virion’s. Beneath his, his lover is flushed, hot as the fire roaring in the hearth.

The world can’t touch them here, not inside these walls, not when Virion’s mouth traces a line down Talen’s throat, not when Talen tugs Virion’s shirt off and presses himself so hard against his lover’s body that he thinks they might just become one entity. This is the start, he thinks dizzily as they slip out of their clothes and Virion holds him tight as Talen rocks against him, still just  _kissing_ , lost in an embrace that Talen hopes will never end. He will take his  _vhenan’_ s darkness and replace it with this instead: sunlight, fire, and being desperately, desperately  _wanted_. Being beautifully whole.


End file.
